My law firm represents a fairly substantial number of companies that sell product worldwide over the Internet. This work has given us considerable insight into the legal issues international e-commerce companies often face, and since one of our international e-commerce lawyers recently wrote a client memo analyzing the key legal issues this particular company will face as it ramps up its international business over the Internet, I figured I might as well pull the highlights from that memo and set them out here.
The following is a list of the basic law related questions we typically grapple with when assisting companies that are starting to sell internationally over the internet.
1. What type of legal entity(ies) are you going to want? Where will you want them? These two questions must be answered in tandem.
2. From what countries will you accept purchases? Are you going to accept purchases from every